Friday, 6 April 2007

T. rex ate coconuts

A new museum in Petersburg, Kentucky greets visitors with a 20ft tall tumbling waterfall and at its base, mannequins of frolicking children play amongst dinosaurs. The Creation Museum, which cost $25 million to build, is home to many unusual sites: a diorama of ancient people overshadowed by a towering T. rex, Adam and Eve swimming in a river with giant reptiles, and even a scale model of Noah's Ark. It seems Noah solved the problem of fitting dinosaurs into his vessel by only taking baby dinosaurs. Indeed, the ark has a detailed display of many animals happily boarding the boat: dinosaurs cavort with giraffes, penguins, hippos, and bears.

Museum guides tell visitors that before Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise all of the dinosaurs were peaceful plant-eaters. In Genesis 1:30 God gives ‘green herb’ to every creature to eat and so there were no predators. When a curious museum visitor asks, why exactly T. rex had six-inch long serrated teeth, the guides go on to explain that T. rex used his big teeth to open coconuts. Apparently it was only after Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out of paradise that the dinosaurs started to eat flesh.

My opinion: I think the people who built this museum are smoking a bit too much ‘green herb’.

10 comments:

While it would be somewhat comforting to think Ham and Co. were merely smoking some wacky tobaccy, unfortunately it seems they're suffering from quite real delusions.

Also, I love the old rex picture you put up... I remember the book that picture was in and used to get it out from the library all the time. All you need now is one of a "Brontosaurus" neck deep in a swamp and you'll be all set, hah.

Funny you should mention T. rex, there are many scientists who now believe he wasn't a predator after all. This has nothing to do with Creation vs. Evolution, it has to do with evidence. It seems the evidence for T. rex NOT being a predator is stronger than the evidence for the contrary.

Read about it here: http://dsc.discovery.com/guides/dinosaur/trex/feature/feature.html

The picture on the top was painted by the great Zdeněk Burian, one of the best paleo-artists of all time. In book I own, which is only illustrated with paintings of Burian, this one is entitled as Tarbosaurus bataar, and not Tyrannosaurus, which was shown a page before.

Funny thing those Christians. Whenever they want to oppose the scientific consensus they claim 'there are many scientists who now believe...'.but present no names of those 'many scientists'! The article actually states it is one scientists who makes this assertion based on his speculation, but to the contrary:

"Horner says the reaction to his hypothesis is often heated. His colleagues in paleontology seem largely unconvinced" ..."The most common professional objection to Horner's scavenger hypothesis is that most predators will scavenge if they stumble across a free meal, and many scavengers will kill prey when the opportunity presents itself. T. rex, this argument goes, was almost certainly an opportunist — both a scavenger and a predator as the situation dictated.Horner gives no quarter on this issue."

It is therefore a lie that this article claims "It seems the evidence for T. rex NOT being a predator is stronger than the evidence for the contrary."

Why Fish Feet?

I study the evolution of terrestrial communities. My research begins in the Devonian, about 385 million years ago, when the first tetrapods (animals with four feet) evolved from fish. Fossils like Tiktaalik from Northern Canada blur the line between fish and amphibian because Tiktaalik has a mosaic of characteristics. There are many questions surrounding the evolution of tetrapods:

Why did vertebrates move on to land?

When did they begin to breath air?

Did their new limb structure develop in the water?

Our current understanding of the fossil record indicates that weight-bearing limbs developed while these animals were still living an aquatic lifestyle. I find this idea of fish with feet very funny and it makes me think of many new and important questions such as: